Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday December 20, 2012 @08:44AM
from the but-predictably-so dept.

judgecorp writes "British Prime Minister David Cameron is set to reverse a policy announced last week, and demand that ISPs filter adult content by default. This system would require users to actively opt out of a filter designed to block adult content and material about self-harm. Last week, after consultation with parents, the Department for Education had said that an opt-in system would be sufficient and no default porn block would be required, but the Daily Mail has announced triumphantly that Cameron will be presenting the policy in the paper. MP Claire Perry, who has argued for the block, will be in charge — and freedom of speech campaigners have branded the sudden change of mind as 'chaotic.'"

Perhaps we could, I don't know, wait until David Cameron actually announces this policy, rather than just believing everything you read in the Daily Mail, particularly as the Daily Mail are so hilariously biased on this subject in the place. Not to mention it's the Daily Mail.

This is like this news stories you see where they tell you what someone is going to "announce" later. If we already know what they're going to say, why are you telling me before they've said it?

You never see slashdot quoting the Weekly World News about the latest exploits of Batboy.

Not quite sure, probably because they're batshit crazy right wing hypocrites who love to make up sensational headlines. They also like to pretend they're 'for the people', they are in fact are made up of the same set of Tory toffs that would take away every-ones rights and freedoms as long as it didn't affect them too much, as long as they get to make a little profit along the way.

Interestingly, the Daily Mail is a paper aimed predominantly at women and is the only newspaper in the UK with a majority female readership. Just look at the right hand row of images for proof. Women in general are more 'think of the children' than 'think of your rights' (or porn).

Further to this, the article hints at Cameron making a mandatory, default filter, however in the original article this is never stated. So arguing about the source is kind of a moot point as the original source never mentions any mandatory filtering. Waiting is a great idea here, this should not have made it to submission.

It's almost exactly like the US yes, ie basically nothing important really changes no matter who's in power. Even when you vote for the "other side" (or in our case a coalition of 2 parties), "democratic" government is "democratic".

There are three major parties (discounting UKIP, who may or may not come to something in the next General Election), and two of them coalesced to form this government. The other party has not voiced strong opposition to this policy. So of a choice of 3 parties, two are implementing it and one doesn't seem to care overly. So not much of a choice there.

For what it's worth, the government launched a public consultation, which came back overwhelmingly against this policy. So you can't vote against it, and can't

The only RAs in the story were to the previous announcement that has allegedly been overturned. The Daily Mail article that the story is about is here [dailymail.co.uk], though as it's the Daily Mail I take it with an emetic-scale pinch of salt.

If parents want to protect their children for things that they consider objectionable they could use a government proxy to block what the government think that is objectionable or ask their isp for filtering (to avoid messing with i.e. browser configuration), but must be the parents option.

Given that parents didn't have an equivalent to an ISP filter for books that I read and television that I watched when I was growing up, why would they need their kids to have a professional babysitter now? If the kids must have a computer in their room and not the family room, surely there's a simple way to configure a router / firewall PC to show all web pages going into the house in real time. Also, if it's basically a censorship blacklist, I wonder:
1) What else might end up on it "by accident" and th

Can I get a default block on things I find offensive to children please?* Violence* Religion* Telephone Scams* Adverts to tacky products* politicians* The Daily Mail

Seriously why the focus on this one thing that some people think is bad for some other people? If you have a problem with receiving something, you fix it, the tools are out there and free! Don't make your problem my problem because of your ignorance and laziness.

Most of all, it goes this way:
1. I don't want to be marked as "the guy who requested switching the adult filter on" by the government or ISP.
2. It's better to have it this way by default, and not have to resort to proxies.
3. YMMV highly about what is or isn't offensive.

Seriously why the focus on this one thing that some people think is bad for some other people?

Agreed, but didn't they already do this once? Think about it. If you ask everyone then eventually you'll find that everything on the Internet is offensive in some way to someone. They group all of this "offensive" content under one umbrella and opt you out of the Internet by default. If you want access to the Internet you have to opt in, and even pay for it!

The whole cycle is starting again. IMHO, it's just another way to increase the price of Internet access. Once everyone's paying the additional "opt it to everything" fee the process will start again.

Speaking as a British citizen, one with two small children (aged 7 and 8), my take is that my government is acting like a bunch of morons. They're allowing themselves to be led by the Daily Mail - a newspaper that has a long track record of spouting an ultra-conservative line that includes rabid xenophobia and plain and simple hatred of a significant proportion of the UK population. This move is not about making a rational choice, it's simply all about securing votes - the Daily Mail's readership are exclusively Conservative party voters, David Cameron's party.

I'm strongly against net filtering. Implementing mandatory filtering is the thin end of the wedge. It will not be long before there's complaints and campaigns by the likes of the Daily Mail complaining about inappropriate material that is not being filtered. How long will it be before Wikipedia gets banned? That site is packed full of very adult material that some will find objectionable. And what about the BBC News covering stories about pedophilia? And all the swearing in YouTube videos? Google searches can link through to objectionable material, complete with previews, so shouldn't that be banned too? Even without such encroachment into areas that rational people can see as being innocuous, filtering still ends up being a blunt weapon, filtering out sites that deal with issues such as contraception and abortion since they fall under the label of "sex". If kids can't do research into such things then the problems we have in this country of teenage pregnancy can only get worse.

As an example of such blunt filtering, I recently used a wifi network at a local church that had filtering enabled on their connection. They wanted to prevent childrens groups that met there from accessing things they deemed as being objectionable material. The end result was that almost every single link off of the church's own website was blocked. They saw the light after a few weeks and disabled the filtering.

If this move happens I will be opting out of the filtering. That in itself makes me nervous - some people will assume that because I've done that I must be a bad parent. That sadly is exactly the kind of false conclusion that an average Daily Mail reader will reach.

Well, quite. This "policy" is being driven by the most shrill of Mail Mums. But Daily Dad does like to drink of the beer and look at teh boobies, so - like all pulpit pounders, ever - the rag and its site is rank with hypocrisy.

Similarly, I recall the Sun running its usual "Find the paedos, spill their blood" stuff in the same issue where they ran a "Phwoar, Charlotte Church wins rear of the rear" wankpiece, using a photo taken when she was 15.

"Similarly, I recall the Sun running its usual "Find the paedos, spill their blood" stuff in the same issue where they ran a "Phwoar, Charlotte Church wins rear of the rear" wankpiece, using a photo taken when she was 15."

It was the Daily Star - there was a piece decrying the depravity of Chris Morris's Brass Eye paedophile special, and in the next column had the pic of Miss Church (15) with the heading of "She's a big girl now... chest swell!"

The very MINUTE a celebrity turns 18 (sometimes even earlier), they're hung on the Daily Mail's wall of shame, often with a headline in the vein of: "Ooh! Look! Celebrity X is all grown up! Here's some hawt pix!!!".

You can practically hear the heavy breathing in articles like this [dailymail.co.uk] where the young age of the actress is the focus of the article. Seems odd for a newspaper that claims to campaign against the sexualization and commercialization of childhood, right?

Then there's the straight up porn stories. I mean.. wtf? [dailymail.co.uk]

Just have a scroll down the "FEMAIL" column on the right of any page. The "articles" listed there really say it all.

And what about the BBC News covering stories about pedophilia? And all the swearing in YouTube videos? Google searches can link through to objectionable material, complete with previews, so shouldn't that be banned too?

It does not work that way. It is much worse - big player are not filtered because of the outcry they produce. Instead random small website that have pissed either connected people or an obsessed joe calling customer service 10 times an hour, get filtered. Most of them would never even realise that they are filtered because, if this filter is implemented as all the others, the list of blocked website is considered confidential.

That is the danger. And yes, even Google could get along and filtering its searc

If they did introduce such filtering it would generate endless complaints from parents finding sites that somehow got through. If the government wants to be every child's nanny they will have to be effective, which is impossible.

So there are two issues here:1) As others have mentioned, using the Daily Mail as the definitive source for anything ridiculous2) No matter the source, it would be nice if the submitter/editor actually read the content of the article and not just link blindly to it.

The article quite clearly states:

The Prime Minister says the Mothers’ Union, which has advised the Government on how to shield children from adult and violent internet content, is backing alternative proposals to allow parents to tailor exa

If you guys were a bit more sensible about free speech and stuff, you might still own India and North America! Oh! Ok, that was a little mean... I'm sure it was just because running the ENTIRE PLANET was just too much of a bother...

Aah seriously though, setting up Tor isn't that hard and might be an option for those countries in which "Freedom" comes with dickish air quotes. At least until such time as your government decides to ban it. It should be good for another decade or so, though, until someone rea

After this is introduced other so called "questionable content" websites will slowly start appearing in the blacklist. Want to know more about drugs / safety / etc? Too bad, you're too young to know anything and have an opinion.

Oh gods, I have to tell that that I want to be able to view adult content! This position is untenable!

Despite the US being far from perfect, at least I have the freedom to do pretty much whatever I want as long as life and property are respected.

I live in the UK, and I also have that freedom. I also had a few freedoms a lot earlier than I would have had them in the US:

UK public drinking age: 18US: 21

UK public smoking age: 16US: 18

UK age of consent/adulthood: 16US: 18

Tell me, which is closer to being a "totalitarian state".. the country with an opt-out porn filter, or the one where the government can do whatever the fuck it wants, whenever it wants - without telling anyone - via the PATRIOT act? How can you be so hypocritical?

This is somewhat misleading. States actually determine the age at which all of these things are legal. While it's true that all states fall into line with federal policy on drinking and tobacco ages, this hasn't always been the case. The legal drinking age in Louisiana was 18 well into the 1990's. It didn't change until 1996 or 1997 (I remember becasue I'd just graduated college, and my girlfriend at the time was only 20. She was "grandfathered" in and could drink, as could anyone who at least 18 the day the new law went into effect). Age of consent varies wildly state by state and can be as low as 14. In theory any state can change any of these ages independently (though in practice funding rules from the feds make it unlikely that they will for drinking or tobacco)

Erm, the first opportunity for Scottish people aged 16 or 17 to vote in elections is coming up but hasn't happened yet....and Scottish 16 year olds who commit a crime are not imprisoned in adult jails.

And the Patriot act is the big bad boogie monster that supposedly strips everyone of their constitutional rights even when nobody can actually give an example of what constitutional rights have supposedly been nullified.

Bearing in mind that there are particularly lurid and erotic oil paintings hanging in Britain's museums, voluptuous topless women in many British mass-distribution daily newspapers, and fine art photography of nudes, not to mention album cover art, statues, anatomy and medical journals, encyclopedias, etc...

Okay, then we need a definition of artistic merit. Leaving out sexuality entirely for the example, my wife was rather unimpressed when she visited the Tate Modern Museum in London several years back, so we didn't go see it when we visited a couple years ago. She did not feel that the works in the Tate Modern held artistic merit. After the fact, I saw something on the Internet that was at the Tate Modern that I probably wouldn't have minded seeing, but she still did not care for.

My point is that it's difficult to define pornography because it always comes down to one's own perspective. Someone might find some fetish work to be art because of some characteristic of the fetish that requires skill to wear or display or carry out, while others will simply see it as pornography without any consideration for the craftsmanship. Even basic nude photography without any hypersexualized intent can fall into this, where some see an image of a naked person as pornography, while others look at the composition of the photograph for focus, lighting, lens selection, background content or props, the work put into the model in hair and makeup, posing, even the particular selection of the model as being able to have artistic merit. It's also possible for those same characteristics to apply to an image or a work that is of something sexual.

Do I believe that parents should have both the right and the responsibility to control their children's exposure to content? Absolutely. Do I believe that it's the State's job to do that? No, I don't.

No, the state is enabling the controls by default, and forcing you to tell the state that you want the controls turned off. The term Google uses for such is "chilling effects". There are a lot of people that won't opt-out because they are concerned about the perception or longer term ramifications if they do opt-out.

Opt-in would be that the state would make it generally known that the controls exist, and would encourage those with children who do not know how to monitor their own connections to subscri

Anything that the government does not like. If it is anti government, it is obviously offensive and therefore pornography. Look at the things the US gov has done under the anti terrorist legislation to get an idea of how this will go. You accessed a web site that had once been used by someone that is now in the army, you are a terrorist... You looked accessed a photo of someone with a naked shoulder, you downloaded pornography!

This has been a standard for Mobile internet for a long time.I remember getting a Pay-as-you-go 3G dongle that was opt-out filtering, but it filtered a hell of a lot more than just pornography.

It filtered Reddit, it filtered 4chan, it filtered b3ta, it filtered a fair few web comics too. And they wouldn't unlock it over the phone unless you had a credit card (I only had a debit card and they wouldn't accept it, go figure), so you had to take the dongle into the store and ask them to unlock it, and take proof of age with you.

If the proposed filter is in any way similer to the current mobile one - and it's opt out - expect there to be a right shitstorm regardless of the ethics of the filter in the first place.

It's probably a technical thing. They may not have an API that lets them query your bank for your date of birth, while I believe running such a check against a credit card may be included in the usual antifraud capabilities (i.e. they make a preauth that doesn't charge you anything but lets them validate your DOB).

Maybe because there's a strong correlation, when speaking in terms of population, between how religious one is and how likely one is to be offended by the sight of a nipple. Or in some cultures, an ankle.

Now remember, correlation causation! But in this case, I'd put my money on "sure it does", if I were a betting man.

Teachin #1: This is about Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) to protect the British porn industries from continental internet competition from players like Belgium based Youporn, Pornhub etc. The European competitors should call upon the WTO to give Britons unlimited market access to free internet porn.